All posts in category Learn to Program with Python

Programming can be a fun hobby and a well paying career for those who learn to do it well, as well as a great way to keep stimulating your brain to keep you sharp and alert. Learning to program on your own can be difficult for some people however. Many programming tutorials have one of the following issues:

Talking above your head: Many programming tutorials assume a great deal of knowledge beforehand, and are therefore not suitable for brand-new programmers

Being half-heartedly written: Many tutorials start out well, but as the tutorial drags on the author loses interest, and the writing and content suffer dramatically

Generally sucking: That pretty much sums it up

I have decided to take my own crack at a programming tutorial, and I will attempt to avoid the previously mentioned pitfalls. There are a few details I would like to cover before we get started. The first is my choice of language. I have chosen to use Python for this tutorial for several reasons, the first and foremost being that I really enjoy programming in Python. I also think Python is great about getting out of your way and letting you program without having to micro-manage details such as Data Types (most of the time) and memory allocation (don’t worry if you don’t know what this means). The next detail I would like to cover is the timeline for this tutorial. I plan on writing this tutorial as multiple blog posts over the next several months, with many unrelated posts in between. If it has been a while, feel free to drop me a comment nagging me for the next issue.

Enough introduction, let’s get started with Programming and Python. To get started, we need to make sure we have Python installed on our system. If you are running Linux, chances are Python is pre-installed. For Windows and Mac users, I recommend ActivePython. ActivePython will install Python to your system, as well as a very basic Python editor (although any text editor will do). Open up your editor of choice and type the following:

print "Goodbye Cruel World"

Now save this as emoProgram.py . This is your first program. Kinda lame isn’t it? Don’t worry, you’ll be writing slightly less lame programs in no time. In fact, the only reason I had you do this is so I could teach you to run your program once you have written it. If you are using PythonWin editor (the editor that came with ActivePython) press Ctrl+R and a box will pop up asking you which file you want to run, and it should have emoProgram.py selected. Press OK, and it will run. If you have chosen to use a different editor (or even if you just like the command line), open up a command prompt and navigate to the folder where you saved your script and type:python emoProgram.py
and you will see “Goodbye Cruel World” print to your terminal.

In an attempt to make each section as short as possible, I will be stopping here for now and picking up again in a few days with variables, operators, and data types.